Hammer Mill at Dobriv

The Hammer Mill at Dobriv is a historic ironworks in the village of Dobriv near Rokycany in the Plzen Region of the Czech Republic, representing a five hundred year tradition of iron processing at the site. The present brick building dates from the early nineteenth century, replacing wooden mills built in 1658 and 1701. The mill originally refined pig iron from blast furnaces into bar forgings, and from the late 1860s it shifted to making heavy forged tools before production ended in the second half of the twentieth century. It was declared a national cultural monument in 2010 and underwent major reconstruction between 2018 and 2019 to restore its nineteenth century machinery. It is now owned by the Plzen Region and run as a working museum by the Museum of West Bohemia in Plzen, where a blacksmith demonstrates the forging of items such as nails for historic buildings.